Revelation 3.14-22
In a sermon preached to the chapel congregation at the University of Andrews in Scotland, the theologian Stanley Hauerwas made reference to a recent philosophy course at Duke.
The class had been taught by their fellow Scotsman, the Catholic philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre. To acclimate the students to the text assigned for that day’s class, Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, MacIntyre recounted the Old Testament’s account in Genesis of the Lord’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. A student in MacIntyre’s philosophy class raised his hand, too innocent to be embarrassed by his query.
“Dr. MacIntyre,” the student coughed his voice into an adequate volume, “I confess that I have no idea what you were talking about just then.”
The Christian philosopher looked his students, now puzzled.
“The akedah,” Alisdair MacIntyre explained matter-of-factly, “in the Book of Genesis, when God summons Abraham to forsake his future by sacrificing his son Isaac.”
The philosopher then paused to see the recollection of a long forgotten Sunday school lesson creep across his students’s face. No such memory returned to them.
“I’ve never heard that story before,” the student, whose hand was still held up in the air, admitted to the philosopher.
Other students nodded and confirmed identification with their classmate’s ignorance.
So MacIntyre retold the troubling text for them, spelling out the details of the Lord’s directions. When MacIntyre finished his summary of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son, the student still looked dissatisfied with the story.
The student asked the teacher, “Well, but how does the story come out in the end?”
And the teacher replied to the student, “We do not yet know.”
We do not yet know because the story begun in Abraham and the exodus is not yet ended.
We do not yet know because the mighty acts of God are not over.
We do not yet know because we are as much characters in the divine drama of salvation as Sarah or Moses or Mary.
Similarly, the seven epistles Jesus dictates to John are messages meant for us as much as they are missives sent to the churches at Sardis or Laodicea. It is straightforwardly clear in this scripture. Each of the seven epistles in the Apocalypse are both locally addressed but universally applicable. Unlike, say, Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, which Paul sent only to the church at Corinth, the Lord bundles these seven letters and sends them out all together across the circuit of churches. In each instance, six of the Spirit’s churches would have heard the word the Spirit of Jesus had for the seventh church. Just so, these letters are meant for us as much as they’re intended for anyone.
To the extent the Fulfillment of all things is still future, the story of salvation carries on with us included in the dramatis personae.
We do not yet know.
Which means—
Christ has a word of judgment for us too. The Lord Jesus has a gospel invitation for you as well. He wants to astonish your heart as much as anyone’s in Asia Minor.
He’s standing at the door.
He’s knocking.
He’s waiting.
He’s wanting.
He desires to have his body back.
Christ’s seventh and final letter to the church at Laodicea is his most famous epistle, and it is perhaps the clearest reminder in the New Testament that Jesus is the incarnation of the Old Testament’s Jealous God.
This last letter is harsh and unremittingly negative. Unlike the church at Sardis, at whom Jesus also directed considerable woe and ire, the Spirit gives no indication there is even a faithful remnant within the Laodicean congregation.
“I know your deeds,” Jesus announces, “that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth.”
The King James translation captures Jesus’s urgency to distance himself from such bland, milquetoast believers:
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
In his salutation to them, Jesus identifies himself as the Amen:
“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Origin of the creation of God, says this…”
This is the only place in scripture where the word amen is not used doxologically, as a word of praise or affirmation. It is instead an identity. In addressing the church, Jesus acknowledges himself as the Great Amen; that is, he is the Source Material, the Originator, of all creation.
As Karl Barth put it, paraphrasing the Book of Proverbs:
“Jesus Christ is the beginning of all the ways and works of God.”
As such, Jesus is primary over everything.
Unlike the six previous epistles, Jesus begins this letter to the Laodiceans with an assertion of his primal authority because the Laodiceans are not likely to agree with the Lord’s estimation of them.
The problem with the church is precisely that the church does not think that the church has a problem.
We do not yet know.
Jesus’s use of creation language is not incidental.
The Lord would have us understand that the situation in the church is so dire, so far gone, so hopeless that if they are to be moved from indifference to desire, from apathy to astonishment, from death to life they need not a new discipleship program or a Sunday School curriculum but “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.”
Christ’s creation language is but a way of announcing the shocking and brutal news that, strictly speaking, there is no longer any church in Laodicea. Sure, there might be people who attend worship and contribute to an operating budget. There might be a building with a sign out front. There might be a community who tends to the poor amongst them. There might be people who welcome and include all. There might be a congregation who takes care of one another like family.
But, if they lack hearts astounded by and on fire for the gospel their situation is so dismal that they require not a reminder but resurrection from the dead.
A church that is filled with the Spirit of Jesus is necessarily a church ablaze for his gospel; conversely, a church that is not on fire for the gospel is a church necessarily animated by a spirit other than the Spirit of Jesus.
Likewise, a Christian whose heart is not astonished by the grace of God in Christ Jesus is not yet (or is no longer) a Christian.
We do not yet know.
Jesus intends this letter for us too.
When my wife and I adopted our oldest son, Alexander was a month away from beginning Kindergarten.
He spoke little English and his adoption from Guatemala to a couple in Fredericksburg had just disrupted after a mere few months.
They had changed their minds almost immediately and they took it out on him.
The rest of that part of the story is not mine to share.
Suffice it to say, we anticipated those first few months and years to be difficult, soul-caring work.
I made up a little song with which we would sing him to sleep, words to imprint upon him the constancy of our love.
And every night, before kissing him goodnight, we would say to him, “There’s nothing you can do to make us love you less. And there’s nothing you can do to make us love you more.”
That’s the gospel.
That’s the gospel.
God forgive us for forgetting it. God forgive us for assuming it. God forgive us for taking it for granted.
If I said that I was in love with a woman but I never spent any time with her— gave her only eighty of my minutes a week— and never told anyone else about her, never introduced anyone to her, never gave her gifts but what I had leftover, never appeared animated by anything but the dullest of passion for her and always relied on someone else to praise her, then would you be persuaded at all that I truly loved her in any meaningful sense of the word?
She would be justified in her anger.
On his way to the cross, Christ commends his followers to forgive upwards of seventy times seven. On the cross, Christ forgives those who nailed him to it, laying down his life for his enemies. After the cross, Christ comes back only to forgive the one who had thrice denied him.
Jesus can even go so far as to justify the ungodly, but for those who have lukewarm hearts for him and his gospel Jesus has no patience whatsoever.
Renown for their black wool and woven textiles, Laodicea was the garment district of the ancient world. It was one of the wealthiest cities in Asia Minor. In other words, the Laodiceans were like us. They were comparatively well-off, without any biblical needs like food or shelter or sanctuary from enemies. The Laodiceans were like us. They were comfortable and competent enough to navigate life’s challenges without the assistance of the Great Amen. The Laodiceans were like us. They were sufficiently rich to pay it forward and do some actual good deeds. Thus, in their comfort, they became convinced of and content in their own righteousness such that they no longer had any obvious need for Christ’s own alone. This is the word play at work in verses seventeen and eighteen.
Rather than the righteousness with which Christ clothed them at their baptism, with their good deeds, they believe they have clothed themselves in righteousness.
From the point of view of the Great Amen, they are “poorly clad.”
As good as naked. They thought they were clothed in their own righteousness. But really they’re in their dirty underwear.
There’s a reason why the gospel preaches in prisons. There’s a reason why the church grows in the third world and under regimes of oppression.
The church in Laodicea begs the same question maybe we elicit too:
Does the person who has everything— does the church who has everything— need anything from Christ and his gospel?
Jesus supplies the answer.
Here’s what you need, what I need:
repentance and forgiveness.
When it comes to Peter’s betrayal of him, Jesus can forgive at least four hundred and ninety times. When it comes to an imagined life of self-sufficiency which believes it has no need of repentance and forgiveness, Jesus can only utter woe, “I will spue thee out of my mouth.”
Jesus admits here he would prefer a community coldly set against him over one ambivalent about him.
Stubborn unbelievers are better than indifferent disciples.
Take me, for example. I can attest from my own encounter with him; Jesus does some of his best work with those who are hostile to him. But for those so familiar with the gospel they’re inoculated against it, the fire of their faith having grown lukewarm, Jesus says there is nothing for him to do but projectile vomit them.
Woah.
We do not yet know.
“There’s nothing you can do to make us love you less,” we used to sing to my son, “And there’s nothing you can do to make us love you more.”
Here’s the thing.
The couple who first adopted him, who quickly changed their minds and took it out on him, the song is the same for them too.
That’s the gospel.
God forgive us for taking it for granted.
Glawspel, the mix that muddles the gospel with the law, always softens the law.
But the gospel can only make alive what the threat law has killed so let us not turn this harsh and terrifying word into glawspel. Let’s allow Jesus’s word to do its damndest on us. Because the truth is, most of us are more milquetoast about Christ and tepid about his gospel than we are about a great many passions and priorities in our lives— in the church even.
And Jesus laments in this last letter there’s nothing he can do with our un-astonished hearts but eject them from his body.
Or, raise them from the dead.
But for Jesus to raise the dead, he needs first to get through the door. This is what’s truly frightening. In the epistle immediately prior to this last letter, Jesus also mentions a door. To the church in Philadelphia, Jesus says the door of salvation stands open and not a one of them can shut it. They’re home free.
At the church in Laodicea, though, it’s a different door Jesus has mind.
Notice, Jesus is talking about the door of the church.
“Behold, I stand at the door [of the church],” Jesus says, “and I am knocking; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with me.”
The believers in Laodicea are gathering in his name presumably and serving in his name probably and likely giving in his name, but evidently their heart was not set on him because, in all their business and busyness, without anyone noticing, they had shoved Christ clear out of the church.
Jesus wants his body back.
Jesus wants back into his church.
But he needs someone on the inside.
He needs someone with a heart astonished enough to open the shut door and insist he come and join us.
In May I taught the preaching course for the licensed local pastors in Virginia. They looked as skeptical as you all about my qualifications to be leading such a class. “It’s like the Woody Allen joke,” I told, “Those who can’t do, teach. And those who can’t preach, teach preaching.”
Before I got to the how of preaching, I addressed the what of preaching; that is, before I wasted any time offering them strategies for how to preach the gospel, I wanted to make sure they actually knew it.
I took a dry erase marker and I drew a pyramid on the whiteboard behind me. Inside the pyramid I drew lines, horizontally and vertically, to create rows and layers of blocks. I circled the triangular block at the top of the pyramid.
“This is the gospel,” I said, “the good news that Jesus lives with death behind him and therefore all his promises of grace and mercy are true and themselves open up the future as promise not threat.”
They stared at me, unsure what my picture had to do with preaching.
“The gospel is the capstone for every word of proclamation,” I said, “It’s absolutely central. It’s the point to every preached word. And it holds together every other word we might speak. Every sermon has to proclaim the gospel. Every sermon must speak for God not about God. Every sermon must hand over the goods, absolving sins on account of Christ and promising that, on the basis of his resurrection, everything is going to be okay. Everything else we might feel called to preach, everything else the text might authorize us to preach, is subsidiary to the gospel of grace.”
Once they understood the point of my illustration, they started to push back on me.
“But what about preaching on the kingdom?” one student asked, “About Christ calling us to build the kingdom.”
Rather than argue with him, I nodded and chose a block underneath the capstone and wrote a capital K.
“My people have a terrible time with their racism,” another student volunteered, “Where do you put preaching about systemic injustice?”
I turned and wrote SIN in block letters inside another brick of the pyramid.
“There’s congregational concerns too that we’ve got to address,” a second career pastor raised his hand and said, “Stewardship and discipleship…”
So I drew a steeple inside another block of the pyramid.
“How about politics and social issues” a recent seminary graduate volunteered, “Karl Barth said we should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other hand.”
I pointed at her and smiled.
“You had me at Karl Barth,” I said, “But even Barth would be on board with my pyramid.”
But I turned and wrote “Current Events” in one of the blocks.
“But it can’t be the gospel every Sunday,” the second career pastor griped, “It can’t be grace and mercy and promise every time.”
I shook my head and said:
“No, every Sunday you’ve got to figure how the text authorizes you to say some form of “There’s nothing you can do to make God love you less. And there’s nothing you can do to make God love you more.”
And then I wrote it above the top triangle of my dry-erase pyramid. Just then a young man raised his head and I could tell from the slight tremble on his lower lip that he was about to make himself vulnerable.
I nodded to him that he had the floor, and he said:
“My Dad killed himself almost fifteen years ago. My brother and I found him. He went to church every Sunday. He heard a lot of sermons but I don’t know if he ever heard that on a reliable basis.”
And he pointed at the top of my pyramid.
“And I can’t help but wonder if…”
And his voice trailed off as he wiped a tear in the corner of his eye.
“I can’t help but wonder if maybe he wouldn’t have, had he heard a promise that lifted whatever burdens he had been carrying.”
There’s a reason Jesus gets so passionate over hearts that are tepid towards him.
I don’t remember that young pastor’s name. But I do know he’s someone who will kick open the shut door and let Jesus into the church.
We do not yet know.
Just before Stanley Hauerwas preached his sermon at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, soon after he climbed the steps into the ancient pulpit he heard three unmistakable sounds.
The soft thud of a door shutting.
The metallic scratch of a key turning.
And the muffled thunk of a lock closing.
The first sound Hauerwas heard got his attention, the sound of a shut door.
He turned around in the pulpit to see the wizened sexton of the cathedral.
Keys jangling in his hand, the sexton explained to Hauerwas that it was the church’s tradition, dating all the way back to the Reformation, to lock the preacher into the pulpit, and keep him there, until he had preached the gospel.
Given the Lord’s letter to Laodicea, every pulpit probably needs a locked door.
So let me make it plain and preach what I teach.
I need to hand over the goods.
Hear the good news:
The Lord Jesus does not end his epistle with law alone.
In his grace and mercy, Christ tells us what we, with our flickering flames and quenched passions, need to do.
"I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire,” Jesus says, “so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourselves and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen.”
But, if we are, as the letter indicts us, destitute wretches, then how can we “buy” such things from Christ? With what currency can we purchase Christ’s righteousness? Jesus supplies the answer in the next verse, “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.”
When it comes to the kingdom, repentance is the coin of the realm.
But notice— and this is the good news; this is our only hope:
The very message the Lord Jesus gives to his church is simultaneously his means of supplying the currency for them.
If repentance is the legal tender we require to cloth ourselves once again in Christ’s righteousness, then this letter itself is Christ’s means of supplying our need.
We do not yet know.
The letter is meant for us too.
The harsh and uncompromising tone of the message is the means by which Christ induces repentance in us.
The good news of the gospel is that, in this harsh word of law to us with our lukewarm hearts, he is— right now— repenting us.
He’s giving us, gratis, the coin of the realm.
Therefore, the good news in this passage is the promise with which we ended the reading of this passage, “This is the word of God for the people of God.”
So repent.
Believe.
Believe there’s nothing you can do to make God love you less and there’s nothing you can do to make God love you more.
Repent.
Believe.
And, for Christ’s sake, someone go open the door.
For Christ's Sake